


All the Difference

by BrooklynWrites



Category: The Americans (TV 2013)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-05
Updated: 2017-06-05
Packaged: 2018-11-09 10:38:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11102841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrooklynWrites/pseuds/BrooklynWrites
Summary: Philip and Elizabeth and the rest of the wedding night we didn't get to see in 5.10 'Darkroom.'





	All the Difference

When the last echoes of Father Andrei’s pronouncements faded and the ceremony came to an end, a weighty silence settled over the room. The three of them stood still, listening, maybe, for any signs of eavesdroppers, their spy senses always at work, even here and even now. But all Philip could hear was the quick rush of his own heartbeat and the slight skitterings of a mouse or a rat somewhere off in the corner. He knew the other two heard the creature too, and all of them listened to it with more attention than necessary, stalling really, each of them unsure how exactly to gracefully wrap up a secret, surprise wedding in a chilly warehouse. Philip picked up on the scratch of a second mouse somewhere and thought about how absurd it was that he’d known how to smoothly handle Clark’s marriage to Martha but felt uncomfortable here, in this moment where he was the most himself he’d been free to be in a long time. Of course, he’d been taught what to do with Martha, and nothing about this night was ever part of their training.

The thought of that freedom was a thrilling one, and he looked at Elizabeth. She was radiant in the half light of the candles still burning on the table, and he wanted to kiss her, to reach for her and at least take her hand in his again. To do something to mark the moment and bring closure to this massive thing they’d just done. But he was feeling suddenly and inexplicably shy in his own skin, and Elizabeth herself was looking anywhere but at him, and so he didn’t touch her.

Father Andrei broke the spell first when he coughed a little and moved to gently gather up the things he’d left spread out on the table. Elizabeth whispered a quiet ‘thank you’ then, and the priest returned it with a slight nod of his head and a small smile. Before he quite realized she’d made a decision to leave, Philip found himself following his wife- god, his wife- back up the stairs into the cold fresh air of the night outside. He thought about reaching for her hand again as they walked, but she had both of hers pushed into her pockets. Her boots crunched against the gravel at her feet. It felt like they’d been inside for hours, maybe days, though Philip knew it really hadn’t been that long at all.

The silence returned, thicker and more claustrophobic, when the car doors slammed shut. For one mad moment, Philip wondered about how Father Andrei got around and if they should have offered him a ride home. He could picture the man sitting in the backseat in his priest robes. Wondered how they’d explain that one if they ran into Stan- just Philip and Elizabeth Jennings out for a late-night drive with an Orthodox priest. Just a nice, normal thing to do. Though of course, nothing about this night had been normal for Philip. He wanted to yell his happiness into the wind if he could, send it out over every radio channel to all of DC. He could sense Elizabeth was working her way up to saying something about it, too. She was fidgeting with the ends of her coat while she stared out the window beside him. Philip knew whatever it was would come out if he was patient. The only outward sign that his heart was still pounding in his ears was the way his fingers drummed gently along the steering wheel.

So when she finally turned away from the window and uttered a just-this-side-of-icy, ‘What if I’d said ‘no’?’ it made his stomach drop. Every instinct he’d ever had about expecting the worst came roaring back into his consciousness with a force that hurt. Memories of all the times she’d rejected him over the years, times she’d treated him like he was just one more thing she had to endure in the name of the mission, they all flitted to the front of his brain like a deranged slideshow of life’s lowest moments. He’d nearly accepted that he’d have to continue to dig out whatever parts of his soul were left to limp on every time the weight of their work crushed it, but he also knew he couldn’t physically take it if she was about to tell him that their whole night had been just another lie, and one she regretted.

He swallowed. Then he looked at her.

She was turned toward him in the passenger seat, and he could see her just well enough in the glare and shadows of the streetlights to catch the fierce spark of humor in her eyes, the way her mouth threatened to turn up at one corner, and he couldn’t help it, in his relief he felt his own smile start to grow across his face, the sensation at once completely familiar and entirely foreign. How long had it been since he’d really, truly smiled?

‘I, uh, I probably would have asked you again next week,’ he said and shrugged. ‘And every week after that. See if you’d changed your mind.’ She considered this a moment, still fighting to keep her smile under control and her air of faux-seriousness in place, but Philip saw it slipping and felt his own grin grow even wider.

‘You would have, wouldn’t you?’ she asked, and he shrugged again because it was the truth, when he thought about it, and she must have realized that too because suddenly she wasn’t just smiling but laughing, her giggles coming so strong she was curled over against herself.  
His Elizabeth, laughing.

The joy and surprise of it gave Philip another wild, fleeting thought, this time that he just might drag her back downstairs and have Father Andrei marry them again, and again and again, if it would make her laugh like this each time, if it would mean he could fill the holes left by all the awful things in his life with love for this woman.

But he can’t do that, and there are other ways to show her that she’s the center of his world, and so he leaned across the space between them and kissed her. He caught her mid-giggle and she spluttered a little against his smile, the kiss messy and silly for a moment. ‘You’re ridiculous,’ she sighed, before he felt her melt against him in earnest. It was an awkward angle, and his knee was jammed against the steering wheel, but still he thought he might never stop kissing her, some part of him always still a little surprised that she lets him. Surprised that she not only lets him but kisses him back.

He turned and let her shift down onto her back once she started tugging at his coat and making the little breathy noises that she knew made his blood rush south. She got one hand into his hair and the other around his shoulders and pulled him down to her and huffed a laugh when it was clear he was hard against her thigh. Philip took that as opportunity to bury his face in her neck, finding the soft spot behind her ear that had always been her undoing.

‘Think your back can handle it like this, old man?’ she asked after a moment, and he lifted his head from her neck just enough to see her smiling up at him in the dark, her eyes wide and soft. He pressed a kiss to her nose.  


‘I’m not that old.’ They smiled at each other for a moment, not moving, and Philip was convinced he really could get used to seeing her so happy, and then she was all business again, kissing him hard and moving her hands down to make quick work of his belt. More giggles when he couldn’t quite get the button on her jeans, but then those were gone too along with her underwear and Philip could think of nothing else but making love to his wife for the first, and the thousandth, time. 

Afterwards, he helped her wriggle back into her pants and then rolled them over, a little clumsily, so that it was his back to the seat and her curled up on top of him. She was so strong, and it was so rare that she really let him hold her like this, that he sometimes forgot how small she really was. He marveled at it and at how lucky he was to have her whole and alive. One hand worked circles on the skin just beneath her shirt at her hip and the other combed through the long strands of her hair as they caught their breath. She smelled like the dust and chill of the warehouse, like sex, and like the cookies she’d made with Paige earlier for a church thing tomorrow. They’d been chocolate chip and she’d let him steal one when Paige wasn’t looking.

‘Do you remember the first time we did this?’ she asked from where her head rested on his chest after their breathing had returned to normal. He chuckled a bit. He could laugh after all these years at the memory of a young Elizabeth unbuttoning her blouse and telling him she was ready, at their initially awkward and fumbling efforts towards conceiving Paige. He’d wanted so badly to please her that he’d been exceedingly cautious, her evident frustration at his slow and careful treatment of her body only working to make his hands tremble harder where he touched her.

‘God, I was so nervous. Did I really get up and show you all the different combination of lights we had in the bedroom and ask which ones you wanted left on or turned off?’ He felt her nod against his chest. ‘I thought you were going to walk out or hit me before we could even go through with it.’ She laughed, and he felt the fizziness of it vibrate through her whole body where she lay on him.

‘I thought about doing both of those things. I was too nervous to handle how nervous you were.’ Philip tightened his hold on her hip at her statement. His Elizabeth, this confident soldier of a woman who wore her silk blouses like armor and who’d seduced more marks than he ever liked to consider, had just admitted to being nervous the first time he’d touched her. At the time he’d figured her for some combination of resigned and impatient, then maybe even a little scared in light of what he now knows happened in training. But a heady case of stomach fluttery nerves would mean at least a part of her had cared even then about how their bodies would fit together, about what it would mean if it worked. He hid his grin in her hair.

‘You yelled at me to just turn all the lights out.’

‘I did.’ He could hear the smile in her voice. ‘I wasn’t really thinking about that first time though. I meant the first time we did this here,’ she nudged a knee at the seat back beside them, ‘in the car like this.’

They’d never talked about it. They’d righted their clothes and driven home without a word that night. In their bedroom she’d stripped down, taken a shower to scrub away the smell of acid and death, and climbed into bed beside him naked, an act not so much of invitation as stubborn defiance. The next morning he’d helped her to cover her bruises, and it was only later that he really saw how the tectonic plates of their relationship had begun to shift under their feet.

‘I remember,’ he said, softly, and she propped her head up to look at him. He saw in her eyes that this wouldn’t be the night they talked about it either. That whatever her reason for bringing it up now it wasn’t to delve into the specifics of what killing Timoshev had meant for him, or what her reaction to it had meant to her. And while maybe a part of him would have liked to hear her say it, something like ‘I knew I loved you when you did that’ or even just ‘I realized what we had that night’ he honestly wasn’t sure that was the truth, and it didn’t matter anyway because whatever it was she did or did not say, here she was in his arms, his wife, finally and officially, and looking at him with more affection than he’d ever let himself hope for.

‘I remember, too,’ she said, and kissed him. 

On the drive home a short while later he turned on the radio to a country tune, and she rolled her eyes, then laughed and took his hand when he started singing along softly in an exaggerated accent meant to make her giggle. She held his right in her left, and she played with the cool metal of his new ring, and he knew they’d both take them off in exchange for their old ones before they got out of the car. One more thing on an endless list of things they needed to hide. But in the moment she was still smiling, her hand warm and soft in his, her hair distractingly disheveled from sex and his hands, and he thought maybe he’d be alright. He had a lot to hide, but he didn’t have to hide from her. And that made all the difference.


End file.
